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  the real value of 60 Days...

  I'm a huge fan of K.S. Robinson as well, but I fear that the most significant contribution of 60 days has been mostly overlooked by the general public (not that you Gristers have necessarily missed it.) It's not in the political or scientific response to the web of crises facing us, but in the very simple equation Robinson makes between social justice and stopping the death spiral. In fact, KSM misses the mark on the first two by a very wide margin, which I'll try to explain as briefly as possible before I get to the good stuff.

  In terms of the political construct with which we're saddled, no effective change can ever come about through policy decisions because such change is in direct opposition to the interests of the system itself, an idea that Jeff Vail explains quite succinctly in his Theory of Market Power, quoted here by our friend Big Gav in his wondrous blog:

  The free market will ignore solutions that can't turn a profit. Any firm that fails to follow this simple maxim won't be in business for long. The corollary to this maxim is that the free market will ignore any solution that cannot be controlled, either through property interests (enforceable intellectual property, monopoly licenses, etc.) or because economies of scale demand centralized operation. This means that free market innovation is structurally incompatible with a huge portion of the universe of possible energy solutions.

  (For more in this vein, plus a brilliant new and very much related post by Gav and even further incendiary commentary from me, follow this link.)

  The point here is quite simple--a world which is grounded on non-polluting, untetherable energy production will not serve the interests of those who now run the show. For those still suffering from the delusion that the Democratic Party is in some way "independent" of corporate control, consider please the role of money in the process of getting elected. But here I digress.

  The science. We've become so conditioned to thinking in terms of an energy source that flows through some sort of pipeline that we automatically ask, "What will replace oil?" The first thing we need to do is abandon that construct altogether. The key to a renewable energy infrastructure is...no energy infrastructure. Sound weird? It should, because it's true.

  Most of you are doubtless aware of Edwin Black's Internal Combustion. How many, I have to wonder, have really understood the great secret Black was forced to be so circumspect about revealing? True, he details (as no one outside of some conspiracy circles has) the nature & history of the energy cartels' various monopolies, and it's also true that he pays great attention to Edison's 1914 dream that every house be energy self-sufficient, but it's not until he discusses Honda's FCX program (on p. 309!) that he lets the cat out of its ancient bag:

  Decentralized Energy Independence & the End of Greenhouse Gases

  More than a car, the Honda FCX comes with its own home-based hydrogen energy station that obsoletes gas stations and gasoline - and even cuts the tether to utility bills. About the size of a common home air-conditioning unit, the Honda Home Energy Station will be driven by natural gas, not electricity, and will create enough hydrogen daily to fill one or more FCX vehicles and heat and power an individual home. Honda's Home Energy Station is no pipe dream. Plug Power, an upstate-New York fuel-cell maker with more than six hundred installations worldwide, supplied Honda home power stations for several years before March 16, 2006, when they jointly announced the smallest model yet and most ambitious phase of their partnership: the FCX program.

  Now, at this point Black is talking about a system that powers hydrogen fuel cell conversion that runs off natural gas--this concession to the natural gas industry is how they were able to get to the starting gate without being crushed. Now watch what happens:

  Honda's Home Energy Station will soon be configured to run on solar, either from panels or perhaps from nanosolar materials embedded in its sleek case or other nearby home surfaces.

  Did you catch that? When they reconfigure it to run on solar, they're taking the natural gas out of the equation. Completely. I have read this chapter many times to make sure; this is the secret that Black has stuck his neck out for. Now read the conclusion:

  An estimated twenty square yards of nanosolar wrapped around a pole or a building surface could independently power Honda's Home Energy Station. A Plug Power source confirmed that the company's home station can be mass produced for the price of an air conditioner, opening the way to scalable untethered energy. (p. 309)

  So, for the price of an air conditioner, using a technology that is already in production, you have all the energy needs for both car & home satisfied without any bloody power plants, greenhouse gases, or wars for hegemony. Now ask yourselves a rhetorical question: If this is all true, why isn't this the news of the day, screaming from every headline, pouring from the mouths of all our dedicated public servants? (See Mr. Vail above.)

  As it turns out, there is yet another road to energy self-sufficiency that doesn't really require any technology at all, but rather a radically cheap and simple architectural design. This is where KSR comes back into the picture. While he doesn't actually mention what are known as positive energy coefficient houses (of which there are presently more than 6 different designs), he does talk about the necessity of social justice in order that the planet be saved. The problem is that we have another thought construct that blocks our thinking in this area.

  So conditioned are we by Malthus' grievous misunderstanding and by the current racist xenophobia about our southern neighbors "stealing our jobs" (not to mention the prevalence of social Darwinism in our every position), that we are basically unaware that in every single case where the standard of living was sufficiently raised, human populations have either leveled off or actually dropped to a natural equilibrium. This is very, very important: as long as the notion of blowback is discredited by specious "they hate our freedoms" propaganda, we, as a society, will continue to look down at our darker brothers living in apartheid America as ungrateful, shiftless freeloaders. Welfare queens.

  Weren't they better off in the Superdome?

  There's an outfit called n'Kozi Homes that is making energy & water self-sufficient housing to relieve some of the unconscionable suffering of the people in Africa by proving them with shelter, energy, and water for life. They are also reclaiming the dessicated landscape and growing their own food, thanks to the genius of Joseph Feigelson, the mind behind n'Kozi. This page will explain the benefits of this vision, as my sermon here is getting a bit long. The point that ties all of this together is that KSR understands that the world cannot be fixed until human rights are equal and universal.

  Our task is quite simple. We need to dismantle our toxic, socially-stratifying ghettos and McMansions, detoxify the soil, rebuild our cities so as to create communites and replant the great forests. To those who say it'll cost too much, I'd respond by saying that the costs are amazingly low--the entire reinheriting of the planet will pay for itself within 5 years of its completion.

  Or, we could just sit back and hoard, as we've always done, and lord it over the rest of humanity while proclaiming our commitment to freedom and democracy.

  (I would go into more detail on the architectural side of all this--the fact that the best new designs are fire, storm & flood-proof, but I've already criss-crossed the line of propriety here...not to mention that we still seem to be living in some kind of Superdome of the mind. Thanks for you patience. Really.)On A review of Kim Stanley Robinson's Sixty Days and Counting posted 2 years, 7 months ago 3 Responses